Fighting famine in East and Central Africa

Ethiopia

Millions of children, women and men face starvation and disease. Without urgent action, the crisis will continue to spiral out of control. Red Cross and Red Crescent staff and volunteers – who live in the communities under threat – are working to break this preventable cycle of drought, food shortage, disease and death.

National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, supported by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) are racing to help stop the crisis.

When the Ethiopian Red Cross Society wanted to start distributing emergency water rations to the most vulnerable of families in these hardest to access communities, getting there was a noted challenge.

It is normally a busy homestead. There are fences and thatched roofs which need repairing, crops which need tending to, water to be collected, and livestock to be put to work on the land.

9 May 2017

Our three key priorities are to:

Reach remote and underserviced areas.

Respond through our volunteer network to help communities prevent and treat malnutrition and disease.

Build community resilience through programmes that restore dignity and strengthen food security and reduce need in the future.

Snapshot

Ethiopia faces a serious food crisis after consecutive rain failures in 2015, combined with erratic El Niño weather conditions. In the past two years, almost every part of Ethiopia has experienced below average rainfall. Pastoralist communities in southern and south-eastern lowland areas have suffered heavy livestock losses and reduced access to food. Malnutrition rates are rising across the country. There are now 5.6 million people in need of food assistance. Water shortages are exacerbating the ongoing acute watery diarrhoea outbreak, particularly in the Somali region where there is a concurrent measles outbreak.

In Ethiopia’s Afar region, drought has had a devastating impact on local communities, and thousands of people have lost most of their livestock. Here, we’re now distributing goats to help families restore their livelihoods.#FightingFamine

IFRC appeal

The Ethiopian Red Cross Society (ERCS) is providing vulnerable communities, especially, children under five and pregnant and lactating mothers, with supplementary food, improved malnutrition screening and referral, support to community health services, improved access to safe water and hygiene promotion, and reinforce family livelihoods and coping mechanisms.

10,408,171 Swiss francs

to help 318,000 vulnerable people devastated by drought

Our impact

91,400 children and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers have been provided with food.

5,000 goats have been distributed to 1,000 families, many of whom lost their livestock due to drought conditions.

Water, sanitation and hygiene

National capacity

Training for community-based first aid and health, provision of first aid kits and mobile phones for reporting.

Community engagement

Health, hygiene and sanitation promotion for schools and households.

Volunteering

38,355 active volunteers.

About the IFRC

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is the world's largest humanitarian network and is guided by seven Fundamental Principles: Humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, universality and unity.